Abuse of People with Disabilities
Children with disabilities are more likely to be physically and sexually abused than children without disabilities. Consider the following risk factors for child abuse:
Risk factor # 1: Lack of knowledge of normal child development.
When infants are awake their two main activities are eating and crying. Because infants are growing at such a phenomenal rate, they do need to eat all of the time - eight to fourteen times a day. Because infants wake up several times a day AND need to eat many times a day AND because their crying literally demands attention, the normal infant can leave parents exhausted. Think for a moment of the state of the parents. They are sleep-deprived, constantly interrupted by demands of the infant to be fed immediately, to be changed, to be made warmer or cooler. Which parents would be most likely to abuse their children? Before you protest - but it's a baby! - consider a few facts:
If someone else (other than a baby), woke you up several times a night, and urinated on you, you would either have them arrested or punch them in the nose. What if your fourteen-year-old son did these things? You would still be pretty likely to punish him harshly, right? At some age, however, we believe that such behavior is okay. If you had the (mistaken) idea that by six months or eight months babies should be sleeping through the night, or that you could teach a baby to sleep through the night, then you might have a different view.
If you read Alice in Wonderland, you might remember this poem:
Speak harshly to your little boyAnd beat him when he sneezes
He only does it to annoy
And because he knows it teases
The cook, who recited this poem, was definitely one we would consider at risk for child abuse.
